Before 2003, there were over one million Christians in Iraq. Today, there are
as few as 200,000

In today’s paper we carry a welcome and, frankly, remarkable commentary by Douglas Alexander, the shadow foreign secretary. It stands out not just as a passionate plea for the human rights of Christians living overseas but also because it comes from a leading member of the Labour Party. It would seem that Labour has decided that it does “do God” after all.

Mr Alexander is not the first politician to make such a statement; last month Baroness Warsi told an audience at Georgetown University that large numbers of Christians are persecuted abroad. And some political analysts will doubtless say Mr Alexander’s intervention is a canny effort to attract votes from the Conservatives, to tap into the communitarian impulse that some people around Ed Miliband calculate to be the best guarantee of victory in 2015.

Nevertheless, we agree very strongly that it is time to stand up for Christians facing violent intimidation. He points to research showing that Christians are perhaps the most terrorised religious group in the world. In 2011, religious groups were persecuted in 160 countries and Christians were harassed in the largest number of places. In Egypt alone, 207 churches were attacked this year and 43 Orthodox churches completely destroyed. It is not uncommon for churches to be covered in blasphemous graffiti or sprayed with bullets by men driving past. It has become an act of courage just to express one’s faith and, all too often, the Foreign Office has seemed reluctant to act or speak forcefully.

Last week the Prince of Wales delivered a personal and deeply moving statement about the threat to religious liberty. He expressed “outrage” at Islamist attacks on churches, noting: “Christianity was literally born in the Middle East and we must not forget our Middle Eastern brothers and sisters in Christ. Their church communities link us straight back to the early Church.” Indeed, they do. In that region of the world we find some of the earliest Christian communities, which have survived centuries of warfare and which suddenly seem under threat of annihilation. Over the past century, Christians have gone from making up 20 per cent of the population of the Middle East to under 4 per cent today. Before 2003, there were over one million Christians in Iraq. Today, there are as few as 200,000. So it is particularly apt that Mr Alexander has chosen to speak out at Christmas, for the place where Christianity began with the Nativity is now the place where it is most visibly under threat.

With any luck, Mr Alexander’s comments also mark the end of a politically correct culture that made Alastair Campbell instruct Tony Blair to drop references to God, and which has made so much of the establishment nervous about criticising extremist Islamic groups. A new consensus appears to be emerging that freedom of religious expression for everyone, including Christians, is worth fighting for.